Archive/File: imt/tgmwc/tgmwc-12/tgmwc-12-113.04
Last-Modified: 2000/01/25

THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Seidl, are there any passages in these
documents which express the opinion that the same principles
ought to be applied to others than fellow Germans?

DR. SEIDL: In this last quotation the defendant Dr. Frank
dealt basically with questions of law without making any
difference here between Germans and members of foreign
nationalities. However, in his capacity as Governor General
he also fundamentally objected, at all times, to the
transfer of Poles, Ukrainians and Jews into concentration
camps. This can be seen from a whole series of entries in
the diary.

With this I have come to the end of my evidence for Dr.
Frank. There are left only the answers to questionnaires by
witnesses whose provisional interrogation has been approved
by the Tribunal. At a later date I shall compile these
interrogatories in a small document book and submit the
translation thereof to the Tribunal.

THE PRESIDENT: You are speaking of interrogatories where you
have not yet got the answers: is that right?

DR. SEIDL: Yes. There are interrogatories to which the
answers have not yet been received.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes. Well, as soon as you have received them
you will furnish them to the prosecution and to the
Tribunal?

DR. SEIDL: Yes.

THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Pannenbecker.

DR. PANNENBECKER (Counsel for Frick): In presenting evidence
for the defendant Frick, I shall forgo calling the defendant
himself as a witness. The questions which require an
explanation deal mainly with problems relating to formal
authority and also with problems which differentiate between
formal authority and actual responsibility. These are
problems which have already been partly elucidated by the
interrogation of Dr. Lammers and which will, for the rest,
be cleared up by the submission of documents. One special
field, however, cannot be entirely clarified by documents,
and that is the question of the actual distribution of the
power of the police, but for that special field I have named
the witness Dr. Gisevius. He is the only witness whose
interrogation seems to be necessary in the case of Frick.
Therefore, I shall dispense with the others.

I ask the Tribunal to decide whether I should call the
witness Dr. Gisevius first or whether I should submit my
documents first. If documents should be presented first, I
believe that I could finish by the midday recess.

THE PRESIDENT: You can finish your documents before the
adjournment, do you mean?

DR. PANNENBECKER: Yes. I believe so.

                                                  [Page 201]

THE PRESIDENT: By 1 o'clock ?

DR. PANNENBECKER: Yes.

THE PRESIDENT: Are you indifferent whether you call the
witness first or whether you present the documents first ?

DR. PANNENBECKER: Yes.

THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal thinks that perhaps it would be
more convenient to give the documents first. They hope that
you will be able to finish them reasonably quickly.

DR. PANNENBECKER: Yes.

Numbers 1, 2 and 3 of the document book deal with evidence
concerning the question of whether the members of the Reich
Cabinet knew about Hitler's preparation for aggressive war.
I do not have to read the documents; they have already been
submitted, and they show that Hitler informed only those of
his assistants of his plans for aggression who had to know
of these plans for their own work, but did not inform Frick,
who, as Minister of the Interior, was responsible for the
internal policy.

With the scope of the war preparations, Frick was made
Plenipotentiary for the Administration of the Reich by the
Reich Defence Law of 4 September, 1938, which has already
been submitted, as Exhibit USA 36. This law does not
indicate that this position had anything to do with a
conscious preparation of aggressive wars; it shows only the
participation of the inner administration, in a general
preparation and organisation in the event of a future war. I
have therefore included an excerpt from this law in the
document book under Number 4, in order to correct an error.
The defendant Frick himself stated in an affidavit on 14
November, 1945, that he had held the position of
Plenipotentiary for Reich Administration since 21 May, 1935.
This is the date of the first Reich Defence Law, which has
already been submitted as Exhibit USA 24. This first Reich
Defence Law of 21 May, 1935, however, does not provide for
the position of Plenipotentiary for Reich Administration;
that is contained only in the second law of 4 September,
1938.

This second law has been submitted as Exhibit USA 36.
According to this erroneous statement, which the defendant
Frick made without having the two laws at hand, the
prosecution has also stated that Frick had held the position
of Plenipotentiary for Reich Administration since 21 May,
1935, while actually he held it only since 4 September,
1938. That is, since the date of the second law.

Documents numbers 5 and 6 of the document book have already
been submitted by the prosecution. They also prove nothing
except the participation of the defendant Frick in the
establishment of civil administration with a view to a
possible future war. It is not necessary to read these
either.

The prosecution considers Hitler's aggressive intentions to
be so well known and so obvious as to require no further
proof. The prosecution on that assumption came to the
conclusion that participation in the National Socialist
Government, in any field whatsoever, would in itself imply
the conscious support of aggressive wars. In opposition to
that I referred to evidence in documents 7-10 of the Frick
document book, which have already been submitted by the
prosecution and which show that Hitler in public, as well as
in private conversations, from the time he came into power,
followed a definite policy of declaring his peaceful
intentions - a policy, therefore, which for notable reasons
declared to all and sundry that peace was preferable to war.

I believe that these documents, which have already been
submitted to the Tribunal, must also be considered in order
to decide whether or not Hitler's official policy since his
coming to power indicated that he had intentions of waging
aggressive war. As evidence in that direction, I should like
to submit numbers 11 and 12 of the document book, which have
not been presented until now, and which I will submit as
Exhibits Frick-I and 2.

                                                  [Page 202]

The first is a telegram of 8 March, 1936, from Cardinal
Archbishop Schulte to the Supreme Commander of the Armed
Forces at the time of the occupation of the Rhineland in
1936. The second document is a solemn declaration by the
Austrian Bishops, occasioned by the annexation of Austria in
March, 1938. The first document states:-

  "Cardinal Archbishop Schulte has sent to General von
  Blomberg, the Commander-in-Chief of the German Armed
  Forces, a telegram in which - in that memorable hour when
  the Armed Forces of the Reich are re-entering the German
  Rhineland as the guardians of peace and order - he greets
  the soldiers of our nation with deep emotion, mindful of
  the magnificent example of self-sacrificing love of the
  fatherland, stern, manly discipline and upright fear of
  God, which our Army has always given to the world."

I particularly selected these two documents because the
Catholic Church is not suspected of sanctioning aggressive
wars or of approving Hitler's criminal intentions in any
other way. These statements would have been unthinkable if
the accusations of the prosecution were true, namely, that
the criminal aims of Hitler and particularly his aggressive
intentions had been notorious.

THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Pannenbecker, the Tribunal would like to
know what is the source of this telegram from the
Archbishop, Exhibit Frick-1.

DR. PANNENBECKER: I took the telegram from the Volkischer
Beobachter of 9 March, 1936.

THE PRESIDENT: And the other one?

DR. PANNENBECKER: The other one is from the Volkischer
Beobachter of 26 March, 1938.

Number 13 of the document book contains only one sentence,
taken from a speech made by Frick, from which it is evident
that Frick shared the same opinion. He stated in this
speech:-

  "The national revolution is the expression of the will to
  eliminate, by legal means, every form of external and
  internal foreign domination."

THE PRESIDENT: You gave that the number 13, did you?

DR. PANNENBECKER: Yes.

THE PRESIDENT: I beg your pardon. That should be 3.

DR. PANNENBECKER: Yes, that is what I wanted to say. I
submit it as Exhibit Frick-3.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes.

DR. PANNENBECKER: The defendant Frick has been accused in
particular of working for the "Verein fur das Deutschtum im
Ausland (Association for Germanism Abroad). The prosecution
saw in this activity a contribution by the defendant Frick
to the preparation of aggressive wars. Frick's actual
attitude regarding the aims of the "Association for
Germanism Abroad" can be seen from Document 14, which will
be Exhibit Frick-4. In a speech made by Frick, it states:-

  "The 'Association for Germanism Abroad' has nothing to do
  with power politics or with frontier questions; it is,
  and intends to be, nothing more than a rallying point for
  German cultural activities the world over."

In Document 15 which is Exhibit Frick-5 -

THE PRESIDENT: (Interposing) Dr. Pannenbecker, I perhaps
ought to say that in the index of this document book it
looks as though the exhibit numbers were the numbers of the
documents in the order in which they are put in the book,
but that will not be so.

DR. PANNENBECKER: No, it will not be so.

THE PRESIDENT: That last document which you just put in as
Exhibit 4 is shown in the book to be Exhibit 14, which is a
mistake. It is Document 14, but not Exhibit 14.

DR. PANNENBECKER:. Document 14, Exhibit 4.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes.

                                                  [Page 203]

DR. PANNENBECKER: On the same subject I have entered in
Document 15, Exhibit 5, a decree of the Reich Minister of
the Interior of 24 February, 1933, which also deals with the
question of the work of the "Association for Germanism
Abroad." It states:-

THE PRESIDENT: Has that not already been put in? I see it
has a PS number.

DR. PANNENBECKER: It has a PS number, but then it was not
submitted as evidence by the prosecuting authority.
Therefore I quote:

  "The suffering and misery of the times, the lack of work
  and food within Germany, cannot divert attention from the
  fact that about 30 million Germans, living outside the
  present contracted borders of the Reich, are an integral
  part of the entire German people; an integral part, which
  the Reich Government is not able to help economically,
  but to which it considers itself under an obligation to
  offer cultural support through the organisation primarily
  concerned with this task - the 'Association for Germanism
  Abroad.'"

In Documents 16-24 of the document book, which I do not have
to read in detail, I have collected the legal decrees which
deal with the authority of the Reich Ministry of the
Interior as a central office for certain occupied
territories. The tasks of this central office, which had no
authority to issue orders and no executive authority in any
occupied territories, have already been described by the
witness, Dr. Lammers, and these tasks are a special entry in
Document 24. I do not have to submit it in evidence. It is
an official publication of the "Reichsgesetzblatt" (Reich
Legal Gazette) and has, in addition, already been submitted
as 3082-PS. In accordance with the fact that the central
office had no authority to issue orders in the occupied
territories, there is, in Dr. Frank's diary, a confirmation
of the fact that the Governor General alone had authority to
issue orders for the administration of his territory. I do
not have to quote this passage since it has already been
submitted to the Tribunal.

Police authority in the occupied territories was transferred
to Reichsfuehrer S.S. Himmler; but Frick, as Reich Minister
of the Interior, had nothing to do with this either, since
that authority was vested only in Himmler, as Reichsfuehrer
S.S. That can be seen from Document 26 of the document book,
which also has already been submitted as Exhibit USA 319.

The prosecution further considers the defendant Frick
responsible for the crimes committed in the Protectorate of
Bohemia and Moravia since August, 1943, on the basis that
Frick had been Reich Protector in Bohemia and Moravia since
that time. In this connection I refer to Documents 28 and 29
of the document book, from which it is evident that at the
time that Frick was appointed, the former authorities of the
Reich Protector had been sub-divided between a so-called
German State Minister in Bohemia and Moravia who, under the
immediate supervision of the Fuehrer and Reich Chancellor,
had to manage all government affairs, and the Reich
Protector Frick, who received some special authority and
essentially had the right to grant reprieves after sentences
had been passed by the local courts.

Frick has also been accused of being responsible for the
political police, that is, the Secret State Police (Gestapo)
and the concentration camps. Until 1936, police matters were
the affair of the individual States in Germany, and
accordingly, in Prussia, Goering, as Prussian Prime Minister
and Prussian Minister of the Interior, built up the
political police and established the concentration camps.
Frick, therefore, as Reich Minister of the Interior, had no
connection with these things.

In the spring of 1934 Frick also became Prussian Minister of
the Interior. Previously, however, Goering had - by a
special law - attended to the political police outside the
jurisdiction of the office of the Prussian Minister of the

                                                  [Page 204]

Interior, and placed it under the immediate supervision of
the Prime Minister, an office which Goering retained for
himself.

The corresponding decrees have already been submitted by the
prosecution as Documents 2104-PS, 2105-PS and 2113-PS.

The same is evident from Document 30 in the document book,
which has also been submitted as Exhibit USA 233.

Thus, in the political police sphere, Frick, until 1936, had
only a general right of supervision, such as the Reich had
over the individual States. He had, however, no special
authority in individual cases, only that of issuing general
directives; and in Documents 31-33 of the document book I
have entered a few of these directives issued by him.

I quote No. 31, which will be Exhibit Frick-6:

  "In order to correct the abuses resulting from the decree
  for protective custody, the Reich Minister for the
  Interior, in his directives of 12 April, 1934, to the
  district (Laender) Governments and Reichsstatthalter
  anent the promulgation and execution of decrees for
  protective custody, has determined that protective
  custody may be ordered only: (a) for the protection of
  the arrested person; (b) in the event that the arrested
  person, by his behaviour and especially by activities
  directed against the State, has directly endangered
  public security and order. Therefore, protective custody
  is not permissible when the above-mentioned cases are not
  applicable, especially (a) against persons who merely
  make use of their public and civil rights; (b) against
  lawyers for representing the interests of their clients;
  (c) for personal affairs, as for instance, insults; (d)
  because of economic measures (questions of salary,
  dismissal of employees and similar cases).
  
  Furthermore, protective custody is not permissible as a
  counter-measure for punishable actions, since the courts
  are competent to deal with those cases."

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